Over the years, many writers, agents, and publishers approached Willie Mays, seeking his cooperation on a biography, and Mays always said no. So how did someone who never saw him play, doesn’t live in New York or San Francisco, and isn’t even a Giants fan get that honor? Therein lies an author’s note.
In 2000, I wrote my first book, on Rubin (“Hurricane”) Carter, a very different black athlete of that same era, and after one of my talks, a stranger approached me and said I should really write a biography of Willie Mays. The idea immediately appealed to me. As a kid, I wanted to be a sports journalist because I thought my typewriter would be my ticket to all the games. Well, I was wrong about my career and wrong about the typewriter. What didn’t change was my love for baseball, and while I never saw Mays play—I was born in 1962 and grew up in St. Louis—the name was magic for any fan.
My problem was that I didn’t know anyone associated with the Giants or even Major League Baseball. In search of leads, I found a recent ESPN documentary about Mays. The program captured the arc of his remarkable career, celebrating the highlights and noting the disappointments. What was missing was... Willie Mays. He was interviewed but said very little. He was depicted, as a player and in retirement, as isolated and inscrutable. “No one really knows Willie Mays,” Bill James said.
Mays might have been unknown, but he wasn’t unknowable. Fortunately, the documentary featured an interview with an older gentleman who did seem to know him, Sy Berger. I learned that he had retired from the Topps Company, the maker of baseball cards, so I called Topps, which kindly gave me Berger’s home number on Long Island. I called him, introduced myself, and said I’d like to talk to Willie Mays about a possible book.
Sy’s voice was gravelly but gentle. He told me he’s known Willie since 1951—they were both a couple of kids back then—and he had signed Willie to his first trading card contract, and they had been good friends ever since. He had also advised him on financial matters. “I’m one of the few people he trusts,” he said proudly.
Sy was encouraging but skeptical. He very much wanted a biography of Willie because he believed his friend wasn’t appreciated enough. His numbers didn’t capture his greatness, and a book was needed to spell out, particularly for those who never saw him play, his true genius. But Sy warned me that Willie didn’t like talking about himself and can be uncomfortable in social settings. He told me how he travels with Willie to Cooperstown for the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, and while the parties are going on, Willie will stay in his hotel room, and everyone will want to know where he is. “Finally,” Sy said, “he comes down, and he’s the life of the party.”
By now I had read about Willie’s occasional run-ins with reporters, and I asked Sy about them. He said Willie didn’t always handle situations the right way; he could ruffle feathers and could even make it difficult for his friends.
“So,” I said, “what do you think of Willie?”
“Me?” he asked. He paused and chuckled a bit, and I’ll never forget what he said next. “I love the guy.”
That was good enough for me. We spoke for more than an hour, with Sy explaining that Willie had legitimate reasons to be wary of outsiders and that his gruffness toward strangers was his way of protecting himself. “But once he gets to know you,” he said, “he’ll tell you all the stories.”
It was July, and Sy asked me to write him a letter with my request, which he would take to Willie at the Hall of Fame ceremonies later that month. He told me that convincing Willie was a long shot, but he would try to help. The day after Sy returned from Cooperstown, he called.
“He’s not interested,” he said. “Sorry, but that’s Willie.”
So I wrote another book but kept Sy’s number, and two years later I called him again and reintroduced myself. He remembered me, and we had another long discussion about Willie, whom he was going to see in a few weeks in Cooperstown. Sy told me to send him another letter, and he would see what he could do. I dusted off my original note and sent it. Soon after he returned from Cooperstown, Sy called.
“Not interested,” he said. “Sorry, but that’s Willie.”
So I wrote another book, and two years later I called Sy again. We again had a long talk about Willie, Sy again told me to send him a letter, and he would again see Willie at Cooperstown. A few days after the ceremonies, the call came.
“Still no luck,” Sy said. “That’s Willie.”
I had a thin file on Willie Mays, including Sy’s phone number, but when we moved to a new house, I tossed the file. Three strikes and you’re out, I figured.
So I wrote another book. After I completed it, my agent, Todd Shuster, asked me what I was going to do next. I told him I was considering some other writing opportunities, “and frankly, the only topic that would still interest me is Willie Mays, but that didn’t work out.”
“You have to try again,” Todd said. (This, of course, is what agents get paid to do—prod their authors to write another book when common sense says they should get a real job.)
It was now January of 2007. Seven years had passed since I first spoke to Sy. I no longer had his phone number and didn’t even know if he was still alive. You can appreciate the tenuous life of a writer when his career hinges on the pulse of an octogenarian. Fortunately, the Topps Company again gave me Sy’s number, and both Sy and his lovely wife, Gloria, were still very much alive. This being the winter, Sy would not be seeing Willie at Cooperstown, but he said he would call Willie for me and to please send a letter.
Days passed. Finally, Sy called back. “He’ll talk to you,” he told me. “I’ll give you his phone number.”
I promptly called the number but got what appeared to be a fax machine. I kept trying, with the same result. I called Sy back and asked him to check the number. He did and gave me the same one. I tried again but the call wouldn’t go through. I called the operator and asked her to try, but she couldn’t complete the call either. I called Sy back.
“Sy! That’s not the right number. Please look again.”
He fumbled around. The number he had given me had ended in “2422.” Now he gave me another number—this one ended in “2424.”
Of course.
I called Willie, and he told me I should stop by his house that weekend. I’m not sure he appreciated that I lived in the Boston area and he lived in California, but he was now giving me directions from the highway, and three days later I was ringing his doorbell.
It still took a full year for Willie to get comfortable with the idea and with me, and to find the right publisher, and to work out the details. The book is an “authorized biography”: Willie agreed to cooperate with all of my efforts—granting interviews; directing me to friends, colleagues, and family members; and sharing documents, photographs, and other archival material. Willie read the manuscript (given his glaucoma, he had Rene Anderson read it to him), and he could correct any factual errors. With one exception, Willie did not ask me to change a single sentence, idea, or anecdote. (The exception: I described the fight that Willie had with Ruben Gomez in Puerto Rico. Willie told me to add that he and Gomez resumed their friendship when they returned to the States.) I promised to keep his point of view front and center, but the conclusions and interpretations are my own. Willie and I are dividing the proceeds of the book, with much of his going to the Say Hey Foundation.
Why did Willie agree to cooperate on this project? He probably had several reasons, but I said to him at the outset that this book will try to define his legacy on and off the field. “You should look at the totality of your life—the achievements and the disappointments—and if you’re satisfied with the balance, you should do this.”
I didn’t know it then, but Willie is extremely proud of his life, and I think he ultimately wanted a complete outsider to validate it. Toward that end, I interviewed more than 130 people (some of whom came from Willie, others I found on my own), reviewed more than four thousand newspaper and magazine articles and blogs, watched several documentaries on Mays, read more than 135 books, sorted through dozens of photographs, and found countless letters, contracts, and documents related to Willie—from his high school report card, to his father’s employment records with the Pullman Company, to Ed Howden’s detailed report describing Willie’s efforts to buy his first house in San Francisco.
On one of my early visits with Willie, I was to meet him in his box at AT&T Park, and we would chat while the Giants were playing a game. I arrived an hour early and noticed that outside the park about fifteen people had lined up next to the gleaming Willie Mays statue so they could have their picture taken next to it. I then walked into the Borders bookstore across the street and checked out the sports aisle. There were biographies of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, and Roberto Clemente. But there was none of Willie Mays.
When I went back outside, I saw that there were now twenty people waiting to have their photos taken next to the Mays statue. I realized then that it was my job to tell those people what was inside that bronze sculpture.
It was worth the wait.